Truth, freedom, and common sense: What I'm grateful for this Thanksgiving as a Russian immigrant to the United States

This Thanksgiving and holiday season, I want to thank my fellow Americans for choosing truth over lies, freedom over government control, and common sense over nonsense in the 2024 election. Americans have chosen to make my adopted homeland great again. I'm so proud to be able to bring America back to the normal state it was in when I arrived here 35 years ago, leaving behind Soviet Russia, the country of my birth.

But for the last few years, I felt like I was back in the USSR, where government apparatchiks and elites controlled everything. The state controlled every aspect of your life. We were afraid to speak our minds and demand freedom.

In recent years, America has become a country of censorship, a country where the ruling class treats workers as second-class citizens and maligns them. There are two different judicial systems in the country: one for the rulers and a different judicial system for the ruled.

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Today, I am grateful that my fellow Americans decided enough is enough. They overwhelmingly voted for the kind of America my mother dreamed of me living in. Here's what Americans chose:

truth

When I was a child, my mother always told my sister and me, “Don't believe what you hear on TV, radio, newspapers, or teachers. If you're confused, ask your parents.” It was certainly confusing. As a teenager, I began to realize that things were not as they were presented by party leaders and the media.

Teachers said that socialism is the best system in the world because everything is free and you can prosper. But when I went to the grocery store, I saw mostly empty shelves, sparsely stocked with dry sausages, stale bread, wilted potatoes, and sour milk. A free visit to the dentist (which I only go to when I can no longer bear the tooth pain) meant having my teeth scraped without Novocain. Talk about torture. The doctor tied you up so you wouldn't kick him while you were in severe pain.

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July 2, 2023 at the White House in Washington, DC. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

During the Biden-Harris Presidency, we heard over and over again, “The border is secure.” But once I went outside of New York City, even in midtown Manhattan, I no longer felt safe walking alone.

freedom

Many of my friends and family are strong supporters of President-elect Trump. But they have kept it hidden for fear of jeopardizing their careers and ruining professional relationships and friendships. They have quietly endured being called deplorable, trash, and other awful things. My friends come from a variety of backgrounds: lawyers, doctors, business executives, law enforcement officers, entrepreneurs, and other hard-working and honorable Americans. Native American or immigrant.

Many people across America were afraid to wear red hats that simply read “Make America Great Again” for fear of being insulted or even assaulted. For 35 years, I have repeated my mother's advice to my American-born children: “Don't share your political views or family dinner conversations with anyone other than close friends and like-minded family.'' I couldn't believe it was happening. “You shouldn’t wear a reading hat to the ballet studio.”

Those days are over.

President-elect Trump arrives to speak at an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center on November 6, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

common sense

President-elect Trump plans to dismantle the Department of Education, cut federal funding to schools that teach the destructive Critical Race Theory, and ban biological males from participating in women's sports. I'm happy. Cross-dressing men will no longer insist on using the women's restroom. William Thomas (aka Leah) will no longer win medals from Riley Gaines at the swimming championships. No more madness.

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, a famous Russian writer and historian and Nobel Prize winner who was sentenced to eight years in a forced labor camp for writing a letter criticizing Joseph Stalin, said this about the Soviet regime: I wrote it. “We know they're lying, they know they're lying, they don't even know we know they're lying. We know that they know, of course they know, that we know for sure, that they know that we are lying. They’re lying, and they’re still lying.”

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Thanksgiving meal placed on the holiday table. (Adobe Stock)

Those in power who know they were lying to us. How else can you explain that they made a 180 against an absurd policy? Trump is not yet back in the White House, and major companies like Walmart, Ford, John Deere, and Toyota have already abandoned their woke DEI efforts.

No, you don't have to buy an electric car if you can't afford it. Yes, I will continue to cook using a gas stove. And yes, we proudly wear red, white, blue, or any other colored hat if we so choose.

“The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to take part in lies, not to support false acts!” said Solzhenitsyn, one of the bravest men.

Americans refused to participate in falsehood. And this is what I'm grateful for this holiday season.

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